


Relinquishment

by Owlix



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Drug Addiction, Gen, cheap and nasty body tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlix/pseuds/Owlix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were supposed to fix the damages, and they usually did, but afterwards Drift could still feel the places it had been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relinquishment

Before they put Drift back in his body, they were supposed to fix the damages.

It was right there in the fine print, which Drift had theoretically read before he’d signed. But he’d been high enough at the time that he barely remembered any of it now. That had been against the law - mechs had to sign their bodies over sober and clear-headed - but the Relinquishment Clinic staf had been eager to take what had been on offer and unwilling to let him walk out the door. Probably afraid he wouldn't survive long enough to walk back in. They'd been in such a hurry to rent Drift's body out that they’d removed his spark immediately, even before clearing his body of toxins and illegal software.

The memory of that first uncomfortable separation stuck with him - the lack of body, the drifting emptiness of the whiteout vacuum that had felt to him like bliss. The clarity of being nothing but energy, a sharp contrast to the mess of circuit boosters and hunger and pain from moments before. Spirit drawn from metal. Peace, or something close to it.

They were supposed to fix the damages, and they usually did, but Drift could still feel the places it had been when they put him back.

The stings from dents and scuffs considered minor enough to ignore. The resonant ache from damage that had been left to his own self-repair systems - damage in deep, intimate parts of him, pain that clung to him for weeks, that often still lingered the next time he signed his body over. And, worse, the smooth, slick glide of new replacement parts, where he'd been too badly broken to be worth repairing.

Drift tried to not to think about it. Tried hard not to draw any conclusions from the patterns of pain and aches and replaced parts. But it became impossible not to.

 

Ratchet noticed, when Drift visited him to get other unrelated repairs. It wasn’t the scrapes and dents that gave him away - those were normal, an inevitable side-effect of subsisting in the Dead End - but the replacement parts, all more expensive than Drift could ever have afforded on his own. If he’d needed repairs that severe in any normal circumstances, he would’ve had no choice but to come to Ratchet. And he hadn’t.

Drift watched Ratchet come to his conclusions. Watched him frown and quietly disapprove. Watched him fix Drift anyway, and decide not to say a word, because he knew Drift wouldn’t listen.

 

It became barely tolerable - the faint, constant reminders that even Drift’s body wasn’t his. There had been plenty of times when Drift had been high and woken up injured and unable to remember who had done it or how. He tried to tell himself that this was just the same. No worse. But it didn't feel the same, no matter how hard he tried to make it.

Instead of pushing Drift away from the clinic, those feelings simply drew him back again. He needed the money, of course. And bad as this was, there were plenty of worse ways for a homeless Dead-Ender to be making it. Drift told himself that he was being rational. But that wasn't entirely true.

Drift had started to crave the whiteout vacuum. The peace of no more questions. Of no longer being a burden to anyone - even himself. Drift imagined that death would feel that way, but not as lonely. He imagined that someday he would have the courage to seek it.

Until then, this was as close as he could get to peace.


End file.
